ESPEN TOLLEFSEN
Espen Tollefsen is a photographer and artist who split’s his time between Oslo and the island of Andøya in the High North. Landscapes feature prominently in Tollefsen’s photographs and projects. Observing and interpreting familiar landscapes, whether natural or cultural, is a recurring motif in his work. “The large in the small, and the small in the large” may also serve as an approach to reading his projects. Tollefsen’s desire to challenge the cycloptic one-point perspective of the camera – a perspective that is at odds with how our two eyes actually perceive our surroundings – has motivated his work on photographic collages. These collages seek to challenge how we see a familiar landscape: what we see and what we perceive are two different things. In his photographic macroworks Tollefsen is mostly interested in perceptions of landscapes, weather, or lighting. By taking minute details from what is for him a familiar landscape and blowing them up to large-scale formats, he manages to create new rooms and interpretations. Tollefsen also uses a combination of new printing techniques and older crafts such as sandblasting and enamel painting in order to transfer these details and motifs to glass, thereby creating further layers and even further interpretations.
Tollefsen has contributed to a number of private and public decoration projects, in which his collages become part of an architectural context and expand the various rooms in different ways. In Oslo, Espen Tollefsen is affiliated with the Lavetthuset studio collective at Hovedøya. In Andøy, he is part of the artist-run gallery and studio Atelier Nøss. He is also a member of the Association of North Norwegian Visual Artists (NNBK) and the Association of Norwegian Visual Artists (NBK).
Espen Tollefsen er fotograf og billedkunstner med base i Oslo og Andøya.
Landskapet er sterkt tilstede i Tollefsen sine fotografier og prosjekter. Observasjon og tolkning av et kjent landskap og kulturlandskap er det som går igjen. ”Det store i det lille, og det lille i det store” kan også være en innfallsvinkel til lesningen av prosjektene. Ønsket om å utfordre det enøyde sentralperspektivet til kameraet i forhold til hvordan våre to øyne oppfatter omgivelsene har hos Tollefsen resultert i fotografiske collager. I disse collagene ønsker han å utfordre hvordan vi ser et kjent landskap.
Det vi ser og det vi oppfatter er to forskjellige ting. I sine fotografiske makroarbeider er Tollefsen mer opptatt av fornemmelsen av et landskap, fornemmelsen av vær eller fornemmelsen av et lys. Ved å bruke små detaljer i et for han kjent landskap som så blåses opp i store formater skapes nye rom og tolkninger. Ved å overføre disse detaljene og motivene på glass ved hjelp av nye trykkteknikker kombinert med gammelt håndverk som sandblåsing og emaljemaling for hånd så skapes flere lag og enda flere tolkninger.
Tollefsen har bidratt i en rekke utsmykkingsprosjekter, både i privat og offentlig regi. I disse oppdragene blir collagene del av en arkitektonisk sammenheng, og utvider dermed rommene på flere plan. Espen Tollefsen er i Oslo tilknyttet atelierfelleskapet Lavetthuset på Hovedøya. I Andøy i Vesterålen er han en del av det kunstnerstyrte galleriet og studioet Atelier Nøss. Han er medlem av Nord-Norske Bildende Kunstnere og Norske Billedkunstnere.
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Flying Pine, is a series of photographic collages where Tollefsen takes a myriad of close-up images of pine trees and reassembles them in order to disrupt conventional one-point perspective. In the reconfigured tree (or object) that thus emerges, Tollefsen also examines the idea of vantage point – what is up and what is down? – leaving the viewer with a sense of weightlessness.
8488 Nøss, referring to the postal code of the hamlet of Nøss on Andøya, is based on how we perceive our surroundings when we are moving. The houses along the road through Nøss have been photographed from Tollefsen’s car window, in motion, and then reconfigured. They can be seen as a series of standalone pictures or as a single, long roll that alludes to Chinese picture scrolls, where the landscape is interpreted as a journey along a timeline.
Die Farben der Schöpfung is a photographic decoration project for the church of St Konrad in Berlin, for which Tollefsen made new works of stained glass. The starting point here is the perception of a landscape, with minute details again being blown up to larger formats to create a space for new interpretations. By combining new printing techniques and older crafts such as sandblasting and enamel painting to transfer these details and motifs to the glass, Tollefsen manages to create even more layers and even more interpretations.